Disrupting Anti-Blackness in Early Childhood Education: Thinking With Refusal

• In Event: Reimagining Methodological Approaches for Disrupting Antiblackness in STEM Education

Abstract

In early childhood education (ECE), pervasive anti-Black racism persists despite decades of research that has shown how education can be a site of hyper-surveillance, dehumanization, and criminalization of Black children. This pervasiveness continues in a multitude of ways, including the ways in which dominant narratives ignore learning opportunity gaps and instead focus on achievement gaps. These narratives circulate, endure, and re-attach to Black children and families in new ways disguised as seemingly benevolent educational practices and policies. This paper seeks to illustrate what is possible when researchers do not begin with the anti-Blackness that is widespread in ECE.

Author

• Fikile Nxumalo, University of Toronto